Overnight Snow and slippery slush. Big wet lumps are pattering off the trees constantly.
Feb 17
Jim Ray:
More importantly, though, with something like browser rendering engines, I’m philosophically opposed to a monoculture.
First, I was observing more than celebrating. (But if any one rendering engine had to win the whole mobile shebang, I’m delighted it’s WebKit. But I’d love to see Mozilla get its mobile balls on.) But, bigger point: if any individual WebKit platform vendor disagrees with the direction of the mainline WebKit trunk, or simply thinks they can do better, they can do so. Real open source.
And:
For one, replace “WebKit” with “Flash” and suddenly the iPhone is the holdout.
Really? Every WebOS, BlackBerry, and Android phone today ships with Flash? I didn’t know that. (Not to mention Windows Mobile 7, phones with which aren’t shipping until “holidays 2010”, and which apparently aren’t going to ship with Flash.)
★
On the desktop Adobe had years to develop a Flash player to run properly on Mac OS X and Linux and failed. If they can’t provide a good implementation for more than one desktop platform how can they possibly provide a half-dozen or so mobile versions that aren’t dreadful?
Feb 11
Chris Hudak
View the Digital Edition | Sign Up
Take your latest CGI of an improbably-hued accretion disk and shove it. I wanted to watch future or other-world parents ragging on their conflicted, rebellious teenaged offspring;
Resources:
Caprica DVD
http://www.capricadvd.com/
Jane Espenson
http://www.janeespenson.com/[From Down To Earth: An interview with Caprica Executive Producer Jane Espenson]
I’ve seen the first few episodes of this now, and it’s very good. Good enough that cancellation is inevitable I fear 
Feb 11
What Do the Experts Say?
Ben Goertzel, Seth Baum, Ted Goertzel
View the Digital Edition | Sign Up
When will human-level AIs finally arrive? We don’t mean the narrow-AI software that already runs our trading systems, video games, battlebots and fraud detection systems. [From How Long Till Human-Level AI?]
It’s been RSN for a long time 
Feb 10
Insightful reporting based on interviews with current and former Microsoft employees:
“When I started at MSFT in 1996, there were six people between me
and [Microsoft cofounder] Bill Gates,” Boris said. “In 2009, there
were 13 people between me and [Microsoft CEO] Steve Ballmer.” Fred
said, “the number of managers between me and the CEO went from six
to 10,” during the last decade. Another long-time Microsoftie,
whom I’ll call Barry, saw his reports go from six to 12.Fascinating stuff, too, about the bizarre incentive structure for Microsoft employees. I think this gets to the nut of exactly what’s wrong with Microsoft. They’ve evolved a powerful, deep bureaucracy that has lost any sort of focus on creating great products. Worse, for obvious reasons Microsoft’s management is unlikely to see itself as the problem. As Upton Sinclair said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
★
Interesting stuff.
Feb 09
Bumper year for finger-friendly phones The world’s smartphone makers shipped more touchscreen models in Q4 2009 than at any time in the past – and more touchphones than devices with buttons.…The power of collaboration within unified communications [From Touchscreens take lead in smartphone biz]
And Apple is the leader in touchscreen smartphones.
Feb 07
Today I opened up my home theatre system to clean the lens on the DVD player with a cotton bud and some isopropyl alcohol as it was beginning to get a bit fussy about rental disks (which tend to be dirty). This was the first time I’ve had to clean it since replacing the whole DVD drive mechanism a while back. It should work with occasional cleaning for a few more months and then I’ll need to replace the whole optical drive again. Or get a new home theatre system.
This is what it looks like inside from when I replaced the drive mechanism.
New drive installed except for attaching the cables.
The old drive before it came out.
Feb 04
It’s a sad tale, if you hear Dick Brass tell it. In a new op-ed for the New York Times, the former Microsoft VP explains how he thinks the Microsoft corporate culture has “never developed a true system for innovation,” and that while the company is obviously strong at the moment, he doesn’t see the company retaining its dominance if or when the Office and Windows revenues die down. His own anecdotes are a little heartbreaking: his team developed ClearType (first announced in 1998), but due to infighting and jealousy within the company, was kept from shipping as a default until 2007 with Windows Vista. Similarly he argues that the Tablet PC was much restricted by an Office team that didn’t believe in the concept, and therefore never developed a version of Office that was stylus-friendly. Dick left the company in 2004, and he says the tablet group at Microsoft has since been eliminated, and that almost all the executives in charge of “music, e-books, phone, online, search and tablet efforts over the past decade” have also left. The man isn’t out to get Microsoft: he sees the company as important, and its profits have obviously gone to great philanthropic ends through Bill Gates and others, but if what he says about the anti-innovative corporate culture is true, it sounds like Microsoft has some work to do before it can return to its place of preeminence as an innovator, instead of the fast and effective follower it seems to be becoming in many areas.Former Microsoft VP Dick Brass weighs in on why Microsoft ‘no longer brings us the future’ originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Feb 2010 09:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | New York Times | Email this | Comments [From Former Microsoft VP Dick Brass weighs in on why Microsoft 'no longer brings us the future']
Moribund and soon to be beleaguered Microsoft lost its way many years ago.
Feb 03
Ordered Monday, arrived Tuesday and put on charge overnight (16 hours required before use) set up today.
Sennheiser RS-130 and HDR-130. Base station and two sets of headphones.
Supplementary headphones.
Just two little AAA NiMH batteries.
Base station and head set.
Installed in the home theatre room for late night viewing of 24, Lost and other noisy shows.
The base station charges two sets of headphones OK.
The SKY HD box conveniently outputs an analog stereo signal simultaneously with the optical digital 5.1
UPDATE: 4 Feb 2010.
Today this SCART->3.5mm headphone adapter arrived and I found it worked to get stereo out of my home theatre unit so now I can get headphone sound while watching DVDs or AVIs on a USB flash drive. The sound out on the SCART turns on when the HT speaker volume is set to Min (0).
